Just a teaser, I have purchased a couple of sketchbooks to start with. Lovely texture, light, with stitches bits I like. Find my previous post here about the drawing circle. We still have available slots for you to join! Drop me a message if you are interested.
Ningbo Focus is a bilingual magazine in Ningbo, China. I answered some fun questions about Indonesia. good fun!
The weekend.
The weather is nice but I am injured, so am not capable on joining the morning cycle with the boys. So yesterday I had a last minute idea about going to a photo walk. Pick-a-something challenge, means I picked a colour and spent an hour hunted and papped anything with a chosen colour. I chose purple, not earth and ubiquitous colour so that it forced me to consciously kept on looking. Qingqing joined me and chose green. Taking place in Gu Luo (The Drum Tower), Ningbo. I was really impressed on how fast my eyes are able to scan objects and find THE colour.Â
Here are some of my favourite shots.
  
Gu Luo, tomorrow morning at 10am. Pick-a-something photo walk, we’ll go for colours this time.
The bike route cards are initiated by John Higham based on his experience biking with a set of printed postcard size cards. We piloted one of the usual route, the loop from UNNC to Dong Qian Lake via Park Hyatt Hotel. The idea is to provide cyclists with visual cues in form of photographs with arrows. It is the shortest route we have so far, if you happen to know more routes, give us a shout.
Find the pdf (23 pages). last modified on 3 October 2016:
edit: 20161003_Bike Route Card 1_UNNC-Park Hyatt-UNNC_low
MapMyRide Link:Â http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/fullscreen/523806116/
Updates:Â 3 October 2016, corrections on sequential problems.
Please drop a message if: 1) you would like higher resolution pictures 2) would like to borrow printed booklet or 3) update us with the vast changing environment by sending your picture so we can replace them. It is a collaborative effort at the end of the day!
Special thanks to contributors as mentioned on the booklet.
Bfn. Mia and Matt.
Both of our quadcopters are unwell at the moment, we are waiting for the new bits and bobs from Taobao! Thank you CHome Service for the Taobao support.
Update: currently we have the third quadcopter, the F330.
Update: I have a green light to start a new Local Drawing Circle in Ningbo :) I chose a Local Circle because I like the idea of meeting somebody and pass a physical sketchbook. Along with the Local Circle, I am joining the Global Circle too but my focus here is the local one.
Here is the Local Circle in a nutshell: the start date is always first day of the month. While you have the sketchbook for a month, draw as much as you want on the same book. At the end of the month, you will need to pass it to the next person. Once we are done with the 12th sketcher (in a year time), the book will need to be sent back to the first person.
You do not need to have a design background, everybody is welcome. I am not the best sketcher myself to be honest.
Let me know if you are interested to join the collaborative local mission, I will put you in touch with Angela Brew. Membership of the circle is GBP6 (60kuai) through Paypal. Link to examples, other Drawing Circles and running circles are here (VPN is needed). You can always join other type of circles: National or Global Circles. One of the sketchbook  has traveled from United States-India-United Kingdom! Have a peep at the site. Update: If you are keen on joining but the fee/ the Paypal account puts you off, i can sort it out for you.Â
There will be a “Thinking through Drawing” symposium, November 7-8th 2015 in London; to meet up and talk about the books. Regrettably I do not think I will stay until November in England, but we might be able to join it through virtual meeting/review. Note: I am thinking out loud, possibly we can reproduce some drawings and put up a small exhibition in Ningbo.
To sum up, let me know if you are up for the second month or subsequent months. Your own pace and time, very flexible. Please visit the circles site too (with VPN): https://brewdrawingcircles.wordpress.com/  Bye for now.
Other links: The sketchbooks, May 2015- I started the circle, End of my sketching month- May 2015, Featured in Ningbo Focus 2015.
(graphic was drawn by me for ICoRD conference poster, January 2015)
 Some of my favourite shots of a tulip show here in Ningbo. We cycled out there on a glorious day. Distance was short, about 30km but weather made it a very enjoyable ride.
Gathering literature and ways to store them are very personal. Some people prefer to do it manually, over paper and pen; with marks, scribbles, highlights or even coffee spill from the favourite cafe. Some other use software, either EndNote or other words processing software.
I place myself somewhere in between. I usually prefer to look at hardcopies when I encountered a new topic, or wanting to sit on a fancy café. Also the other reason is that I like to have a printed bibliography of the new ideas.
When I did my master degree’s dissertation, I used MS Word. I created files based on a theme or identified topic. Before I started my PhD, I was sure that a better storing system is in order. Asked around, did not get satisfactory answers. My gut feeling told me that once I hit 100 references, it will be quite a stretch to manage them. Never mind for the whole PhD duration. I thought “It is a simple concept, like hashtag system. Categorising based on a hashtag, and at the same time we can view information filed under a certain tag. There should be something out thereâ€. In my fourth month, I found Nvivo which is a CAQDAS (Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software) and used it ever since to manage my library.
Although it took me a while to figure out, using Nvivo as means to storage literature is not new. QSR International provides webinars, e-demos and tutorials which guide us from the scratch, I suggest to check their resources.
Here are my usual steps:
In Window 1, there is a long list of nodes I took from my own Nvivo file. The orange colour highlight shows a node I choose to illustrate, “AOS_sketching profile†node. At the bottom bit is what we see when we click the node. Identical idea with hashtags, everything I labelled previously can be found in the node. If we want to see more of a context of the text, click on the underlined words (title of the article)- refer to P1.
It shows Window 2, where exactly the passages are in relation with the whole article- refer to P2. Similarly if we have coded an image, it will direct us to the image- Window 3 . Right click on the location of the image (in my illustration, refer to P3 8 : 51,48 – 491,378 )>Links>Open references source; and it will take us to the image.
Nvivo is quite handy and aids me to focus more on a topic. Words can be coded, un-coded or changed to other codes easily. What needs an improvement (or perhaps what I need to find out) from this system is references in a Node are arranged alphabetically. It would be great that they can be arranged based on the year of publication, so that it’s easier to identify the flow of debates. Also one thing is very crucial, based on my experience, the software has been a great help to arrange my references; BUT doing analysis is our job and not the software.
This is just a brief explanation about using Nvivo to store and manage reference. I am no where near an expert, you are more than welcome to drop me a message to say Hi and possibly bounce some ideas back. Bye for now.